


Sacrifice \ sac·ri·fice \ˈsa-krə-ˌfīs

by RiseHigh



Series: The Reluctant Housemates [11]
Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: And Charles is a bit of a mess right now, Angst, But slightly dysfunctional comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: 1x08, Quill can be mean and comfort at the same time, She's very talented
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8855038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiseHigh/pseuds/RiseHigh
Summary: Quill jolted awake at a noise in the kitchen.  Her hands scrambled for her gun.  Her chest tightened with panic, until she found it wedged between the sofa cushions.  The tightness dissipated as soon as her fingers wrapped around it.  She pointed it at the sound, which was when Quill realized the source was a very haggard looking prince in the kitchen with the kettle.  She lowered the gun.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, this pics up after 'Walk the Line through Pain', but you don't *need* to read that for context. (But you totally should for other reasons...one of which is my ego.)

Quill jolted awake at a noise in the kitchen.  Her hands scrambled for her gun.  Her chest tightened with panic, until she found it wedged between the sofa cushions.  The tightness dissipated as soon as her fingers wrapped around it.  She pointed it at the sound, which was when Quill realized the source was a very haggard looking prince in the kitchen with the kettle.  She lowered the gun.  

“What time is it?” she asked as she stretched her back.

“Half two. Is Tanya okay?”

“Her grandmother is with them.”

He continued staring for a moment before going back to filling the kettle. Quill watched him take the last two clean mugs from the stand and set them on the counter. Apparently, she was going to be having tea as well.

Probably for the best, she thought as she remembered the cup of soup she had put in the microwave before lying down to rest for a few minutes. That had been two hours ago. She needed to eat something. Quill sighed, slipped her gun into the pocket of the robe she wore over her pyjamas, and stood up to join him in the kitchen.

Quill felt his eyes on her as she took the now cold soup from the microwave and tossed it in the bin. “What?”

“Have you eaten?”

“Hasn’t been time.”

“So you haven’t eaten since you…” he trailed off, clearly uncomfortable using any words associated with Quill reproduction. He was such a Rhodian sometimes.

“Hibernated,” she finished for him as she pulled out two pieces of bread that, by some miracle, appeared to be fresh. “During which, I didn’t need to eat.”

“I gave you water.”

That was surprising. Quill expected he had just dumped her on the bed and ignored her. Actually, she expected him to have restrained her or, at the very least, have locked her in her room. (That’s what she would have done if the positions were reversed.). But he did neither of those things.

Whatever.

She put bread in the toaster and turned to look at him. “Didn’t need that either.”

Actually, she may have. Typically, a Quill prepared herself for hibernation—ensured there was enough body fat to prevent dehydration. She had no idea if the soul that aged her would have prepared her body for that, so perhaps he had done some good. Not that he deserved to know that. Quill opened the cabinet to grab a small plate, but found none. She rolled her eyes and took two larger plates off the higher shelf.

“This place is a mess,” she told him, which earned her a shrug in response. “Don’t think I’m going to start cleaning up after you again.”

“You’re staying?” he asked, looking almost pleased—probably because he could barely work the washing machine and had no income of his own.

Quill smirked as she opened the refrigerator to take out the butter. “Were you and Mattuesz hoping to turn this entire place into one big love nest?”

“No, I just thought… well, you know.”

She pulled a butter knife from the drawer and briefly considered holding it in a threatening manner just to mess with him, but decided it wasn’t worth it. (This time, anyway.) Instead, she used the knife to put a pad of butter on each plate.

“You assumed that I wouldn’t want to keep living with my former slave master,” she said lightly, despite the gravity of her words.

“I wasn’t…” he protested.

Quill returned the lid on the butter container with a satisfying snap that cut him off. “You were.”

“It was punishment.”

A part of her couldn’t believe that he was still making that argument. Yet, Quill wasn’t really surprised. He had always refused to see it—refused to see her. There was no reason to expect that he would change. She fixed a glare at him.

“Key word: _was_.”

“But you could have died.”

Without conscious thought, her hand drifted to the scar on her cheek. Quill remembered lying on the auditorium floor fighting to stay awake as the arn dug itself further into her brain (or maybe it had been clawing its way to a final meal of her grey matter). Her mind flashed to when Ballon began: the searing pain—bright white and so intense that she couldn’t breathe, let alone scream—and the continued agony until the moment he did whatever he did with the blood of his god.

The toaster popped.

Quill remembered where she was and who she was with. She dropped her hand abruptly and looked levelly at the prince.

“I nearly did.”

“Then why take that risk?”

She turned away from him and put a slice of toast on each plate. “I wanted to be free.”

“If you had died…”

“That wasn’t living.” Quill thrust one of the plates into his hands. “You need to eat too.”

* * *

Charlie stared down at the toast she had given him. He truly did not understand her. Yes, she had survived it, but she just as easily (more than easily, given how the arn was engineered) could have died. And she still wouldn’t give him a straight answer. Instead she gave him toast. He didn’t need toast. 

But he was also hungry. She was annoyingly perceptive with or without the arn.

Charlie buttered the bread and finished fixing the tea. Balancing the mugs on the plate, he carried it over to the lounge to where Quill was watching him with a bemused look. He was fairly certain she was hoping the tea would spill onto him. When he came over to her, she surprised him by taking both mugs.

“Set that down before you spill tea everywhere.”

He set the plate on the end table before going back to take his mug. They sat in silence for a few minutes—eating toast and sipping tea. Quill finished first and he could feel her eyes boring into him. She didn’t speak until he had finished his toast as well.

“What is it?” she asked. When he didn’t respond, she rolled her eyes. “You don’t bring me tea unless you want to talk and, since you can no longer force me to answer you, I suggest you start speaking now before I finish this and go upstairs.”

“Why?” he asked finally. He could see her gun protruding from the pocket of her robe. None of it made sense. “Why did you save me?”

“You didn’t deserve death. Death is a gift given to you by your enemies.”

“Isn’t that what you are—my enemy? Was that the problem?” Charlie could feel the emotion creeping into his voice but he couldn’t stop himself. “The soul was going to kill me and not you?”

Rather than the angry response he expected, Quill furrowed her brow. “You really don’t have any idea who I am, do you?”

“I know you’ve wanted to kill me since long before you were arrested.”

“I wanted freedom for my people. If your death brought about that end, then so be it,” she explained in a matter-of-fact tone that contradicted the chilling assassination she described. “But it was never my specific intent.”

“Oh, so my life was just a casualty?”

“All wars have casualties. I would think you understood that after today.”

Charlie took a long slow drink just so he would have a reason to avoid her piercing gaze. When he finished, he looked up to see her still staring at him intently—still not saying a damn thing to explain why she saved him.

“Is it because I finally did what you wanted?” he asked. No reaction. She didn’t even blink. “The Quill have been avenged. Thanks to me. Thanks to _my_ sacrifice.”

“That is true.”

“Is that why? Did that make us even?”

“Not even close, Prince.”

There was a coldness in her voice and eyes that gave Charlie chills.

“What else do you plan to do to me?”

“I already did it.”

“You saved me,” he realized. He could feel the tears he’d been fighting back spill over as the gravity of what she did set in. “Saved me so I can suffer.”

“You will carry that pain—live with it, day after day.” Her voice was calm but there was a clear hint of victory in it. His tears didn’t seem to affect her. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying them. “That is your punishment.”

“You’re cruel.”

“You deserve it.”

* * *

Quill had intended to leave him to wallow in his tears, but found she couldn’t. It wasn’t because she pitied him. He didn’t deserve her pity. (Besides, the little prince had more than enough self-pity as it was.) But she needed him to understand the all the reasons she did what she did. Odds were that he would be too thick to listen, but she had to try.

And she was still hungry. Damn fetus.

Opening the door of the refrigerator, she dug around a few minutes before she found some cheddar cheese and a Greek yogurt that were not expired. Honestly, it was a miracle he had survived while she was hibernating. Grabbing a spoon from the drawer, she headed back to the lounge.

“Stop crying.”

“Why?” he asked. “Isn’t this what you wanted? My pain?”

“Well, yes.” She bit off a chunk of the cheese. “But I don’t need the sobbing.”

“I’m sorry my grief annoys you.”

“You need to control it.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t lose anything today.”

Goddess, he was infuriating. His pain was all that ever mattered to him. “You cannot begin to imagine the things I have lost.”

“And it’s all my fault.”

She rolled her eyes. “You give yourself too much credit.”

“But enough of it is that you condemned me to this.”

Quill watched him sniff disgustingly whilst she unpeeled the cover from the yogurt. After swallowing a few spoonfuls, she set it on the end table. She didn’t speak until he was no longer actively sniffling.

“You do realize that punishment isn’t the only reason I saved you.”

He looked at her with genuine surprise as he wiped his eyes. Of course, he hadn’t thought about her possibly having any other motivation.

“For the first time in your privileged little life you acted out of something other than your own self-interest. You made the hard choices. You were a soldier,” she told him. “But a soldier doesn’t get the luxury of walking away. A soldier has to live with the sacrifice.”

“I don’t want to be a soldier.”

“No one does.”

“You do.”

She rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored his comment. That was a conversation for a different time—a time when maybe, _just maybe_ , he would reflect on what he did today and compare it to his perception of her ‘terrorism’ on his people. Pointing it out now it would only fuel the tears that she could see welling in his eyes again. It wasn’t worth the effort.

“You become a soldier when you have no other choice but to fight.”

“But you love fighting. You live for it. It’s all Quill care about, isn’t it? I’m not like you,” he rattled off the sentences in rapid succession before pausing to take a gasping breath. “I can’t celebrate having to shoot my friend—destroy my people—just for revenge.”

Quill bit back a groan of frustration. He had utterly missed the point.

“The Shadow Kin were a threat to this world and countless others,” she said slowly. “April is alive, and that wasn’t your people—they were remnants of what was lost months ago.”

“They were their souls and I killed them. I did it. I’ll never be able to…” he trailed off with a gasping sob. “I can’t live with that,” he continued, his eyes darting around the room erratically before settling on her. “I can’t just get over it like you can. It isn’t fun for me—I’m not heartless.”

The _like you_ was clearly implied.

Quill took another bite of cheese and glared at him. She should stop him and his self-indulgent tirade, but she could tell he needed this. He would have talked to Matteusz no doubt, but he wouldn’t have been this honest with him. The prince would have been genuine (the Polish One wouldn’t be sleeping upstairs if he hadn’t been), but there was a certain type honesty that only came out with someone whose opinion doesn’t matter to you.

Someone like her.

They may be the last survivors of Rhodia and he may have kept her hydrated during hibernation, but Quill had no illusions about what the prince thought about her. She was still the “Quill terrorist” to him. With Mattuesz, he would have been guarded—mindful of his boyfriend’s feelings, but he had no such consideration for hers.  Sitting silently while someone verbally attacked her went against everything in Quill’s nature, but there was something satisfying about watching him unravel after months him being reserved and proper—months of him smugly judging her for her 'out of control anger' and grief. He had far less control than her, and she was a bit curious to see how far he would go.

“I killed them all—my people, my family,” he repeated through his tears.

They were going in circles. She set the cheese aside with the yogurt. His histrionics were ruining her appetite.

“Can’t you understand that?” he continued. In a moment his eyes went from desperate to dark. “You relished in killing my people. You wouldn’t care who you killed, which isn’t surprising since you come from a species that regularly eats its mothers.”

And there it was.

Maybe he could go farther, but that was her limit.

It took everything in her power not to leap across the room and throttle him. It would be so easy to overpower him. Pin him. Wrap her hands around his throat—she could practically feel the crunch of his cartilage and hyoid bone under her grip—and watch the life slowly leave him. She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly.

Quill looked up at him and saw panic in his eyes. He was terrified of what she might do—that she might kill him.

The prince clearly no longer wanted to die. The corners of her mouth turned up the smallest bit.

* * *

Charlie barely dared to breathe as he watched Quill. She was tense—muscles twitching, waiting to attack—but she didn’t. She remained unmoving and then almost started to smile, which only scared him further.

“Are you quite finished?” she asked.

He nodded mutely.

“One time—and only this _one_ time—I will ignore what you said.” Her voice was steely and her eyes told him she would never forget it. “But if you _ever_ question my feelings for my family and my people again, I will kill you in a way so painful that you cannot even fathom it.”

Again, he found himself unable to do more than nod.

“Verbal response, Prince,” she spat. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Charlie fell silent and wiped his eyes and nose. Quill seemed to be collecting herself as well—or at least relaxing her muscles the slightest bit.

“You are in pain,” she said finally. “It is consuming you—controlling you. You need to control it.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

He shook his head. Charlie couldn’t bottle his feelings—not about this. “I can’t just pretend I don’t feel that way. I…”

“I didn’t say that,” Quill cut him off. The anger that had been in her eyes had faded not into warmth, but of resolute determination that was almost comforting in its own way. “You don’t deny the pain; you accept it. It is a part of you. It will always be a part of you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t fight it.”

“How?” he asked, surprising himself with how genuine the question was—how much he needed someone to tell him what to do.

“You keep living in spite of it. Living is the only way to overcome it.”

“And then what? Rage at the world until I become you?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said dryly with a hint of smirk. Her face and voice became serious again. “You will be you,” she told him. “You will take this pain and learn to live with it—to understand it. It will shape you, but you will determine into what.”

“What do you want me to be?”

Quill just looked at him and blinked. Her face didn’t reveal much but it almost seemed like she was surprised by the question.

“Doesn’t matter what I want. It never has with you,” she said simply. There was no bitterness in her voice. “I saved you. I don’t get to control what you do with it. That is my sacrifice.”

With that, she grabbed her yogurt and cheese and stood up to leave. Charlie didn’t try to stop her, and Quill didn’t even look at him as she walked by. He was alone again, but this time it was her voice—and not his own thoughts—that echoed in his head. 

* * *

**Sacrifice \ sac·ri·fice \ˈsa-krə-ˌfīs**. An act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.

**Author's Note:**

> And with that I'm going to temporarily retire (although not formally end) this series so that I can spend some time playing with the Tanya/Quill dynamic and everyone else in the post-finale world in my other series. (And, yes, I know I could just make this one series, but I'm difficult.) 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you liked it and thanks for reading!


End file.
